Product Details

• Actors: David Ogden Stiers
• Directors: Gail Dolgin, Vicente Franco
• Format: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: PBS
• DVD Release Date: May 8, 2007
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000OCY668
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,199 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Studio: Pbs Release Date: 05/04/2009 Run time: 60 minutes

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accurate, although too concise., December 1, 2007

By 

Dr. Debra Jan Bibel "World Music Explorer" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: American Experience - Summer of Love (DVD)

The rise and decline of the popular conceptions of hippiedom are well depicted in the documentary; indeed, it the best that I have seen of similar works produced locally in the Bay Area and nationally, typically with focus on 1968, the year after the so-called Summer of Love. I am an academic hippie myself, age 62 at the time of this review, and was present at the Gathering of Tribes, the formal start of the period, and have lived through all the depicted events before and after. Most other documentaries failed to emphasize the key spiritual component of the cultural revolution. Yes, it was sex, drugs, and rock & roll, but it was also spirituality and consciousness studies that eventually led to environmental/ecology movements, cognitive neuroscience, and psychoimmunology, as well as the increasing popularity of Buddhism in the United States and the development of world music appreciation. As described, all the hippie wannabes spoiled the scene, did not understand the ideologies nor the proper use of entheogens. The popular image of hippies was of them, not the more thoughtful, experimental, and realized post-Beats, the pioneers who led the way. [Peter Coyote's use of B***S*** was bleeped from the PBS broadcast, but we do not need such censorship on the DVD.] Unfortunately, the documentary is too short, merely an hour, making the price of the DVD a tad too much. Still, if you want a proper introduction to the rise of this American Experience, yet influencing the nation as much as the Vietnam War, then this DVD is for you.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential to understanding ourselves, January 2, 2008

By 

Daniel L. Cooke "SF Haight / Castro" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Experience - Summer of Love (DVD)

Though just an hour, this film manages to communicate, with depth, an essential part of the American mind. It shows divisions our society continues to experience. It shows the lost dream of the 60s movement. I'm 44; I missed the 60s, but could feel it in the air when younger. This film helped me comprehend the what, why, and how. A clip of Ronald Reagan railing against LSD as governor of California helped me understand how we moved from being the society of civic duty, in which accumulation of massive wealth was viewed with suspicioun, to the "me society" of the 80s that we still experience. Really, in one hour, snippets communicate enormous volumes of information. To me, the film does not one-sidely glorify the summer of love. It shows the summer's positive and negative affects on society. I think it shows how the extremes of that time led to the backlash in which we live today. Maybe you'll see it differently. In any case, it is essential viewing - especially for anyone who did not live in, as an adult, the pre-Reagan era of American thought.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Was There, November 21, 2008

By 

Mark A. Sheehy "Avid Reader" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: American Experience - Summer of Love (DVD)

This film left me longing for the 60's San Francisco.I was 14 during the Summer of Love,often at Golden Gate Park for the free concerts, and we were protesting something called The Vietnam War? A more innocent San Francisco existed back then. The movie didn't realize that 1967 was the beginning of this cultural revolution which continued for 10 more years!
It did however point out that 1967 defined the City, and its mark is, and forever shall be, indelible.